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israeli apartheid
History Shows Carter Was Right to Warn Against Israeli Apartheid
While the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of Carter’s 2006 book, his words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus.
Jan 05, 2025
The late President Jimmy Carter was not a particularly progressive president, but his exemplary service as a peacemaker and humanitarian since leaving office has resulted in an outpouring of heartfelt tributes following his death at the age of 100 on December 28. During his final years, however, the Nobel Peace Laureate was met with intense criticism for insisting that standards of peace, human rights, and international law should apply not just to countries hostile to U.S. interests, but to U.S. allies like Israel as well.
Particularly controversial was Carter’s 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which went on to be a New York Times bestseller, in which he argued against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory seized in 1967 during a war that the international community had hoped would form the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Carter was a liberal Christian Zionist who believed passionately in Israel’s right to exist as a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Like many left and liberal Jewish Zionists, however, he argued that the continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank would make a viable two-state solution impossible, and that Israel would be forced to choose between allowing for democratic governance in all the areas they controlled—meaning Jews would thereby be a minority, and Israel would no longer be a Jewish state—or imposing an apartheid system akin to the one instituted in South Africa prior to its democratic transition in 1994.
Carter was falsely accused of referring to Israel as an apartheid state, when he had explicitly stated otherwise. He was referring only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the establishment of Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and other strict segregation policies do resemble the old South African system.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
In reality, the main objection of Carter’s critics was that he dared criticize the Israeli government, a recipient of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional taxpayer-funded military equipment from U.S. arms manufacturers.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid received overwhelmingly negative media coverage following its release. The Washington Postaccused Carter of harboring a “hostility to Israel” in part for allegedly failing to note, according to reviewer Jeffrey Goldberg, that the Israeli government “dearly wants to give up the bulk of its West Bank settlements.” In reality, the illegal settlements have continued to expand since 2006, and the Israeli government has reiterated that they are there to stay.
An article in The New York Times about the reaction to the book included a number of quotes from pro-Israel organizations attacking it, while failing to quote a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American source.
The Democratic Party leadership was also hostile to the book. In a rare rebuke by another former president of the same party, Bill Clinton, ignoring Carter’s frequent trips to and extensive knowledge of Israel and Palestine, wrote, “I don’t know where his information (or conclusions) came from” and insisted, “It’s not factually correct, and it’s not fair.”
Howard Dean, then chair of the Democratic National Committee, also voiced his disagreement with Carter’s analysis. Representative Nancy Pelosi, who was about to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declared, “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.” She added, “We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever.”
Former presidents have almost always been granted an opportunity to speak at their party’s subsequent conventions, but in apparent reaction to the book, Carter’s appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention was limited to a video clip speaking in praise of nominee Barack Obama and interviewing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Carter also only appeared in short video clips at the 2012 and 2016 conventions.
In 2022, Joe Biden named Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to be the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. Lipstadt had previously accused Carter of engaging in “traditional antisemitic canards” and compared him to the notorious antisemite and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
But while the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of the book, Carter’s words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus. In 2022, Amnesty International published a 281-page report making a compelling case that Israel practices a form of apartheid toward the Palestinians. Human Rights Watch published a similarly detailed study the previous year reaching the same conclusion. B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization, also released an extensive report documenting the Israeli government’s imposition of apartheid. Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. This past July, the International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion, also found that Israel’s ongoing and multiple violations of international humanitarian law constitute apartheid.
A number of Carter’s former critics, including a board member of the Carter Center who resigned in protest following the publication of the book, have since apologized and acknowledged that the former president was correct. No one in the Democratic Party leadership has yet done so.
Indeed, very few of Carter’s critics have been willing to demand an end to Israel’s settlements and segregation policies in the West Bank or acknowledge that these colonial outposts in the occupied territories constitute a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series of unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
As a result, many Palestinians and others who once supported a two-state solution have concluded it is too late and are now demanding a single democratic state with equal rights for both peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, increasing numbers of Jewish people in the United States and elsewhere now believe that the Zionist movement has become hopelessly dominated by overt racists, and have renounced Zionism altogether.
Carter warned that the choice before Israel was “peace or apartheid.” The Israeli government and its backers in Washington have chosen apartheid—but people across the world have not given up on the peace Carter envisioned.
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Carter’s Legacy Will Live on to Inspire Future Generations
He nourished the norms of personal and civic decency, dialogue, truth-telling, and working for a just society, expressing his Christian faith in action.
Jan 01, 2025
Jimmy Carter was the last president to actively open the government for engagement by citizen groups. Right after his November 1976 election, he agreed to address a huge hotel ballroom in D.C. full of local and national citizen advocates. It was a great success never again repeated by succeeding president-elects.
Mr. Carter then chose civic leaders and other solid progressives to head regulatory agencies such as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and for other high positions in government. He chose the formidable longtime consumer-labor advocate Esther Peterson to be his consumer protection special assistant in the White House. He also supported an independent consumer protection agency which Congress, after a fierce struggle between corporate lobbies and consumer groups, narrowly defeated in 1978. Starting in 1981, Ronald Reagan undermined many Carter Administration health and safety initiatives.
Compare Jimmy Carter’s life with the rancid, corrupt, cowardly politicians spoiling today’s Washington landscapes.
Mr. Carter was also the last president to authentically recognize Palestinian rights and charge the Israeli government with imposing a system of apartheid (“worse than in South Africa,” he said) over Palestine. However, he failed to get Israel to agree to a comprehensive peace settlement, including the creation of a Palestinian state, and had to settle for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
Citizen Carter was easily our greatest former president. For over 40 years his indefatigable work ethic was applied to advancing peace efforts, initiating health programs in developing countries, supervising fair elections overseas and, with Rosalynn, joining Habitat for Humanity as a manual laborer (he was an expert woodworker, among his many skills) to build houses around the country for needy families.
The range of interests expressed through his 32 books and conferences revealed a practical, results-oriented, humble Renaissance man. His compassion and honesty infuse the Carter Center to this day.
He nourished the norms of personal and civic decency, dialogue, truth-telling, and working for a just society, expressing his Christian faith in action.
Compare Jimmy Carter’s life with the rancid, corrupt, cowardly politicians spoiling today’s Washington landscapes.
There are legitimate criticisms of Carter’s foreign and domestic policies that others will examine. But overall, his legacy will live on to inspire future generations of Americans to elevate their expectations and strive toward them with civic dedication and commitment.
I was always in awe of how efficiently he used his time every day—and truly amazed by his relentless productivity. This alone would have been a worthy book by Mr. Carter were it not for his genuine humility.
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Beyond the Myths: Reflecting on Jimmy Carter’s Israel-Palestine Legacy
More than any other U.S. president, he tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews.
Dec 30, 2024
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is a man whose legacy will forever be inextricably linked to Israel and Palestine. Yet that legacy will be built as much on myth as on reality, as with so many other aspects of the history and politics of the “Holy Land.”
Carter is remembered fondly by many on the left, and for good reason. In many areas, he tried to govern with humanity, decency, and with regard to people’s rights. Whether due to his own shortcomings or the limitations of the system, he was not always successful, as citizens of Cambodia and East Timor can attest. Still, if he was far from perfect, Carter did still bring principles of human rights into his policy thinking more than any other U.S. president in living memory, and quite possibly in all of American history.
There can be little doubt that Carter’s heart was in the right place when it came to his ambition to resolve what he referred to as the “Israel-Palestine conflict.” Carter spoke often about the need for Palestinian rights to be recognized, but he also repeatedly noted that he was motivated by his affection for Israel and his desire to see it survive, something he did not believe it could do if it continued to oppress the Palestinians.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time.
Carter had, and often expressed, boundless sympathy for the Jewish people and what they had endured throughout history. But he recognized both that this history did not justify the oppression of another people and that establishing an ethnocentric apartheid state would not end the scourge of antisemitism or the harm that caused to Jews. This was the ethos he expressed in his book, even while it was less visible in his policies as president.
Carter’s view of the issue was, inevitably, shaped by his evangelical Christian background and his thorough immersion in the view of Israel that dominated the United States throughout the Cold War years after World War II. It was a view of Israel that few Palestinians would recognize, but it was also a view that, in the 1970s and 1980s, was still more critical of Israeli actions than the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Carter’s view evolved over the years, as we can see from the two major points of Carter’s engagement with the issue: the Camp David agreement and Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1978 and 1979, respectively; and the publication of his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in 2006.
Meeting Carter
I had the privilege of meeting President Carter a few years before his book was published. The meeting was attended by about half a dozen progressive leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the UC Berkeley campus.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time. I’ve met many political leaders, and I’m used to the air of phoniness they project. There was none of that with Carter. If he wasn’t genuinely affected by the suffering he was talking about, he was a much better actor than he ever was a politician.
Carter spoke with pride of the work he put in to get Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to an agreement at Camp David, and with immense regret that he didn’t do more to secure a better future for the Palestinian people. One can debate the politics and strategy of his actions, and even find considerable fault with them, but it is clear that his intentions toward both peoples were positive.
Carter is seen by much of the Jewish community and many other supporters of Israel as an enemy, the man who forced then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to accept compromises that he and the pro-Israel community wished to reject. But as it played out, Carter did more for Israel’s security than any other U.S. president, while unwittingly setting the stage for the steady erosion of Palestinian rights that the Oslo process represented.
Camp David
The result of the Camp David summit and the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement that emerged from it was that Israel has not faced a credible military threat since the agreement was put in place. Carter understood, as any observer would, that if Israel made peace with Egypt, it would remove the single biggest military challenger in the region and the remaining Arab states would no longer be able to mount a credible threat against Israel. He understood as well that by bringing Egypt firmly into the United States’ sphere of influence, the Cold War balance of power in the Middle East shifted significantly.
Carter, in that case, acted not only in the interests of Israel, but also had a clear American interest in the outcome. The regime of annual aid that has flowed ever since to both Israel and Egypt locked both countries into an alliance, and into a certain degree of dependence on the U.S., a factor that was of great importance in Cold War strategy.
All of this was lost on Israel’s supporters in the United States. In his book, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, historian Eric Alterman described the reaction to Carter mentioning the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” citing Carter’s Press Secretary Jody Powell describing the reaction as “bonkers.” Alterman elaborated:
Democratic fundraising events were cancelled. Representatives of the administration to Jewish groups were shunned. Hyman Bookbinder, the outspokenly liberal Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, lectured the Carter people, “Obviously you apparently do not really understand what these words mean…‘Palestinian rights’ means the destruction of Israel.” A Harris poll taken at the time found 60% of Jews agreeing with the statement that “the president and his people have abandoned Israel.”
Alterman further noted that the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations at the time, Alexander Schindler, leaked the contents of a private meeting with Carter to the press, a highly unusual betrayal of trust. That generated even more intense controversy and American Jewish anger at Carter, as it was intended to do.
All of this, it must be noted, was in response to Carter’s vision of Palestine being a sort of autonomous adjunct of Jordan, a position not far removed from that of most of the Israeli political spectrum. He was not advocating an independent Palestinian state, an idea which was completely out of bounds in American political discourse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Indeed, Carter, in March 1977, said that “the first prerequisite of a lasting peace is the recognition of Israel by her neighbors, Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s right to exist permanently.” Carter never wavered from that position, despite the invective hurled at him by Israelis and Israel’s American boosters for the rest of his life.
When the historic agreement emerged from Camp David, parts of the Jewish community saw Carter in a better light, but this soon faded amid controversy over the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Jewish leadership got even more enraged when, due to a miscommunication, the U.S. voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Though Carter said that the U.S. was supposed to abstain and only voted “yes” by mistake, the Jewish leadership, already hostile to him, was not mollified. It’s worth noting, however, that at that time, opposition to settlements was a much stronger U.S. policy, so much so that even the staunchest pro-Israel advocates didn’t expect the U.S. to vote “no” on the resolution. Times have certainly changed.
While the Jewish community was nowhere near large or powerful enough to cause the defeat of an incumbent president, it was a factor in Edward Kennedy’s strong, if ultimately unsuccessful, challenge for the Democratic nomination in 1980 which weakened Carter. Carter had the poorest showing among Jews of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1920, although he still won a plurality of the vote (John Anderson, who ran as an Independent, got 15% of the Jewish vote to Carter’s 45% and Ronald Reagan’s 39%).
Yet, after all of that, and with some continued grumbling and foot-stomping, Israel did manage to make a peace with Egypt; withdraw its settlements from the Sinai Peninsula; secure the annual funding that has stabilized and grown its economy and helped it become the dominant military power in the region; and kept Egypt as a cold ally ever since. Israel has Jimmy Carter to thank for all of that.
Reagan did little but press forward on Carter’s actions until the end of his second term. Ironically, Reagan would, only a few months after taking office, have his own run-ins with Israel’s domestic U.S. lobby, over the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia.
Yet Reagan remained beloved among the pro-Israel forces, despite selling a state-of-the-art military system to the Saudis, whom Israel was still extremely unfriendly with at that point; despite his frequent criticism of Israel’s behavior in Lebanon; and despite rebuking Israel for its dangerous attack on the Osirak nuclear site in Iraq in 1981. The difference was that Reagan rarely mentioned the Palestinians and often said nice things about Israel.
Apartheid
“And the word ‘apartheid’ is exactly accurate,” Carter told journalist Amy Goodman in 2007. “Within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of ‘apartheid’ is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.”
Carter was responding to the resounding criticism of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The book itself was far less remarkable than the title, which drew an avalanche of criticism to Carter, including accusations of antisemitism. Then-ADL leader Abraham Foxman said, “The title is to de-legitimize Israel, because if Israel is like South Africa, it doesn’t really deserve to be a democratic state. He’s provoking, he’s outrageous, and he’s bigoted.”
Foxman’s statement is bizarre. States, of course, do not “deserve” to be democratic, it is something they either are to a significant degree or they are not. Foxman could not even utter the possibility that Israel was not a democratic state, which, interestingly, was certainly not what Carter was saying either in his book or his subsequent statements and writing.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being.
Carter was trying to warn Israel that it would become an apartheid state if it didn’t change course. This stood in sharp contrast to the claims of Palestinians, who, by 2007, had already been accusing Israel of apartheid for many years. Worse for Foxman was that Carter made the argument that legitimate Palestinian views were rarely heard in the media. Although Carter neither stated, nor even implied, that this demonstrable statement of fact had anything to do with a nefarious conspiracy of Jewish control, Foxman said, “The reason he gives for why he wrote this book is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media.”
Carter knew he was going to get hit for the title of his book. The substance, however, made it clear that he was trying to steer Israel away from its own self-immolation on the altar of its occupation. At the end of his book, he wrote, “The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law... It will be a tragedy—for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world—if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”
The woman in Joe Biden’s administration who currently, and undeservedly, holds the position of Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, said Carter’s book “ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion, and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on antisemitic stereotypes in defense.” The scurrilous accusation is backed up with the same sleight of hand Foxman used.
Carter continued to advocate for Palestinian rights while also, contrary to the assertion of Lipstadt and Foxman, repeatedly asserting that Israel must be afforded a secure existence within recognized and clear borders.
In November 2016, as Barack Obama was preparing to leave office, Carter urged the outgoing president to recognize a Palestinian state, arguing, “The combined weight of United States recognition, United Nations membership, and a Security Council resolution solidly grounded in international law would lay the foundation for future diplomacy. These steps would bolster moderate Palestinian leadership, while sending a clear assurance to the Israeli public of the worldwide recognition of Israel and its security.” It was not the first time he had promoted such recognition.
This was the theme of Carter’s efforts from the 1970s to the end of his days. He was willing to take risks to see that vision come true. Over the years, he and the Carter Center he started made many efforts to heal the breach between Fatah and Hamas, ignoring criticism over talking with Hamas.
Carter’s legacy should be scrutinized carefully and honestly, with the same critical eye as any other president. He made his mistakes, and, as with any president, innocent people suffered as a result. But more than any other U.S. president, Jimmy Carter tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews. No president before or since has tried as hard or has placed peace ahead of political concerns to the extent he did.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being. The hateful comments that came his way for many years, mostly from the Jewish community but also from the Christian Zionists who share his evangelical beliefs but not his understanding of what those beliefs mean, were horribly misplaced. He cared deeply and tried to do what he could to create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. For that, he’s been called an antisemite. Every person who ever uttered that slur against him owes him an apology. Now would be a good time to send it.
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